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Hala - mountain village with surroundings

Hey guys! Haven't been active for a loooong time, but suddenly got back to cartography last week.

So I started with this little map of a small mountain village. I just drew some lines and didn't thought of much.

After finishing it, i was wondering, how the valley looked like, and modeled it in blender (I would love to write really quick, but it was a lot of work). Here some renders:

Anyway, after seeing that my isolines made some sense, i decided to expand the map. Thats what it looks like at the moment.

The Idea behind Hala is that the village is scattered across the map, with smaller clusters like the one on the finished map. All these clusters together make the 'official' Hala. Infos about the people living there will come later, i'm not sure yet...

If sometimes i have really much free time (which i probably wont have), i might turn the whole map into a 3D model, but at the moment i concentrate on finishing that map.

I DO love me some contours Have some rep for having the patience to do so many.

The one thing that I am confused about is the symbolism you used for what I think are cliff faces (around the main Hala cluster of buildings). I think the contours should be much closer around those cliffs (if that is what they are) as the space between the contours indicate the steepness of the terrain, and the symbol would indicate that it is rockface not grass or field.

Otherwise I like what you have here and am waiting anxiously for more.

Art Critic = Someone with the Eye of an Artist, Words of a Bard, and the Talent of a Rock.

aminowrimo, actually, blender isn't that difficult, and it's getting easier with every version! I only used some of the basics, like modelling and applying a material. the strokes you can see in the renders are the newest feature, its simply playing with some checkboxes
You should check it out, there is quite a big online community and lots of tutorials you can go through.

Korash: yes you're absolutly right, these are rock fields. I didn't really indicate where there are cliffs and where rock fields, but if you look at the scale, i think its pretty steep, at extremes 10 meters horizontaly and twenty meters vericaly (the lines are every 20 meters), that would give us 200% steepness (steepest street in the world (wiki): 35%)

Haven't got much time to really work on the map, i placed most of the buildings and paths, see the image.

I reviewed my concept regarding the cluster. I didn't, out of fun, measured some distances and walking distances (see images), and they are quite long for belonging to the same village...I think it's more like a township, with each of the cluster an own village.

regarding the informations about the villagers, i have some rough ideas...
Obviously they have to live on something, so: there will be lots of goats and mountain sheeps for meat, and as for the grain, they probably plant somekind of Rye.

It's a scan (!) of the bottom half. drawing some forest, some smaller rivers, defining the peaks and cliffs, sowed some rye, and started to blacken the houses, paths and labels because the pencil got lost in the color.

One thing though: im not sure, if i should go on with filling the terrain with rough strokes or color the whole area. What do you think?
It started as a sketchy thing, but it developed and got more serious, so i can't decide...

back again, with a scan of my progress.
already did some labeling in the newer part, but there will be a lot more, like on the bottom left part.
Since i wrote "HALA / Solsuno & Basaro / with its immediate vicinity / in the year 1817" it would make sense to make the map even bigger, in fact to the left side. I probably will add one column of sheets, if i'm ambitious two, to have Hala in the center. Actually i would have to add also two rows of sheets, one at the bottom and one at the top, but that would be mad. Anyway, any comments or suggestions?

Thanks, Viking and Ilanthar! I went (for the moment) with one at the left and one the bottom, but havent drew anything on them yet. But i filled the original six sheets with color.
under the title there will be another cartridge with some explanations on it, so that the title won't look like it just somewhere
It will have to rest though for a while, since i'm very busy: July Challenges all over the place and there's something called exams, that i have to learn for, so you have to be patient!
It's more than lousy joined, but as an extra, its extra big